Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Hey Ma, What's for Supper?

by Pa Rock
Food Critic


So what do you do when you're rushing to get the kids to school and accidentally back over the family cat?  Well, if it's dead, bag that sucker and then check out some of Jonathan McGowan's roadkill recipes - many of which are scattered around the World Wide Web.

McGowan, a 44-year-old taxidermist from the United Kingdom who looks amazingly like a mountain man cousin of mine back in the Ozarks, has been living off of roadkill for the past thirty years.

Mr. McGowan, an inquisitive soul, came upon a dead adder when he (Mr. McGowan) was a mere lad of fourteen, and being a normal, inquisitive youth, he wondered what the creature would taste like.  It turned out that the adder wasn't all that tasty, but that didn't stop the boy from sampling other roadkill that he would come across.  Over the years he has sampled and lived off of a wide variety of critters who battled cars and lost.

Obviously, some of the highway fatalities taste better than others.  Mr. McGowan offered this appraisal:

"Rabbits, badgers and pheasants are my most common finds.  Rabbit is actually quite bland.  Fox is far tastier;  there's never any fat on it, and it's subtle, with a lovely texture, firm but soft.  It's much more versatile than beef, and has a salty, mineral taste rather like gammon.  Frogs and toads taste like chicken and are great in stir-fries.  Rat, which is nice and salty like pork, is good in a stir-fry, too - I'll throw in celery, onion, peppers and, in autumn, wild mushrooms I've collected.  Badger is not nice and hedgehog is hideous."
Jonathan McGowan claims to have not experienced any health problems relative to his unique diet, and he posits that the meat from carcasses found along England's roadways is actually much healthier than that of animals which have been raised on processed foods and antibiotics specifically so that they could be slaughtered for food.

So, if you're having trouble making it from paycheck to paycheck, or if the neighbor's damned dog just won't quit barking, try thinking stew.  It's what's for supper!